Art Theatre

17-27 Pleasant Street,

Worcester,
MA01609

I heard recently that this theater is still intact inside and has not been gutted out. It has been made whole and is no longer a 2-screen auditorium. I saw a photo of the proscenium and stage. The seats in front have been removed. The stage is remarkably shallow. I have no idea what plans are in place for this building.

Two THS members went inside the Art around March 2005 while scouting for the 2006 Boston convention of THS. It was operating at the time. I was not with them. The entrance was on the far right of the building with a nice staircase going up one flight. The proscenium and stage were at the left end of the building. They stated that there was a second screen in the balcony, however the visitor in 2008 reported that the auditorium was whole. Anyway, the front wall of the building served as the left sidewall of the theater.

I have to disagree with Spectrum about the building not having been big enough for a theater, and about the auditorium having been in an annex on the Pearl Street side of the block. For one reason, the buildings along Pearl Street were already gone in a 1995 photo at Historic Aerials. The theater was still in operation s late as 2006. Someone who was inside the Art Theatre in September, 2008, described in this comment by Ron Salters, said that the auditorium was in fairly good condition at that time (the auditorium has apparently since been gutted.) It also says that the theater’s stage was only seven feet deep.

This earlier comment by Ron Salters cites a 1941 MGM report saying that the theater then had 650 seats on the main floor and 536 in the balcony. The footprint of this building is quite ample for a 650 seat main floor and a seven foot deep stage. Keep in mind that this was an upstairs house (probably one of the last in operation in the U.S.) and could use the entire depth of the building, all the way to the street wall, for the theater, with none of its space taken up by those storefronts, which are on the ground floor.

It looks like the auditorium has been demolished. The building with street frontage showing above is still there in Google Street Views, but that building definitely isn’t big enough to house the auditorium – From the back it looks like it connected with something that is now demolished. There’s a parking lot there now.

Did anyone know that there is still an old theater on Main Street in Worcester about 400 feet to the left of the renovated Hanover Theater and across from the old Denholm building.? It is on the second floor. curtain still in place, seats still in place. Does anyone know the name of the hidden theater? I was in there about 5 years ago as a visitor.

It is the old Olympia. On the second level there still sits in history, the old cast iron chairs with wood seats that fold down. Above and behind the seats in the projector room there is an old projector that used an electronic type rod that (I think)was carbon arc light. There were some old carbon arc rods just sitting around. Yes, lost in time however very interesting just to sit on the old seats and imagine.

I don’t know why I wrote Joe Goodman in my previous comment. The songwriter’s name was Joe Goodwin.

The Worcester Theatre isn’t listed at Cinema Treasures, and I’ve been unable to discover if it ever showed movies, other than a single exhibition of an early sound film process in 1913. Here’s a page with a photo of it anyway. It had a somewhat more ornate front than the Fine Arts, with some nice Romanesque detailing. Almost every comment on the page conflates it with either the Lothrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts or the Poli/Hanover Theatre.

bbatty: The 1986 photo linked to by lostmemory in the comment of May 15, 2009, shows the same building that is in the Google Street View currently displayed at the top of this page. The Google view shows Pleasant Street, and is dated August, 2007. I believe that the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street was long gone by that time. The theater in our photos has to be the Lathrop’s/Olympia/Fine Arts.

Here is a photo of this theater when it was the Olympia. The John Wayne movie Flame of the Barabary Coast is advertised on the marquee, which dates the photo to about 1945.

The photo comes from this weblog post about songwriter Joe Goodman, which is worth a visit in its own right, as are Chet Williamson’s other posts about Worcester’s songwriters.

There are a lot of great comments here about the old Lothrop’s Opera House\Olympia\Fine Arts. However, I’m surprised that in all this time the pictures have not been corrected. The two pictures displayed on this site ARE NOT the same building being described. These pictures are of the Worcester Theatre on Exchange Street in Worcester. This is the second Worcester Theatre, rebuilt right after the original 1860’s building was destroyed by fire in 1889. This was the “high class” legitimate playhouse of the period that saw most of the great stage actors of the 19th and early 20th century appear here.

If anyone has any stories about going to/ working at this threatre in its adult days, I would love to hear them. I am chronicling the histories of adult theatres in the US. Please contact me at Thanks!

“Someone Who Was There” was in Worcester a couple of weeks ago and managed to get inside the Art. He says that the auditorium is whole and not divided. It says “Twin” at the top of this page, so I assume that it was divided downstairs and upstairs, but there is no evidence of this today. Was There liked the street-level foyer with its staircase going up to the theater; he says the house is in relatively good condition, and reeks of old-time theater atmosphere. He says that there is some sort of drop-ceiling in the auditorium. The biggest surprise was that the stage is only about 7 feet deep. This surprised both of us since we know that it was a live stage theater for the first 20 years or so of its existence. I know that a century ago the troupers in the touring shows were very versatile and could put on their show in any theater, no matter how small the stage. Was There liked this theater very much and hopes the new owner can manage to preserve it.

The theatre was built by George “Doc” Lothrop, who was a colorful character who ran theatres and produced shows in eastern New England including in Boston and Providence. He presented second-run or second-string shows, plays and musicals, and minstrel troupes. Later, vaudeville and early movies. Like many smaller American theatres of the 19th Century, this one is an “upstairs house”, with the main floor one flight up. The MGM Theatre Photograph and Report form for this house has a photo taken in May 1941, when it was the Olympia Theatre. There was a vertical sign above and a triangular marquee with 3 lines. Movies playing are Fred MacMurray in “Virginia” plus “Man I Married”. Walton’s Restaurant is to the right. The Report states that the Olympia has been a MGM customer for over 10 years; that it’s in Good condition; and that it has 650 seats on the main floor and 536 seats in the balcony, total: 1186. It became an E.M. Loew house, perhaps sometime in the 1930s ?? In the post-War era a number of EML theatres were “modernized” and given the name “Fine Arts”, and this apparently was one of them. I understand that it’s under the same management as the Paris Theatre nearby.

Opened as Lothrop’s Opera House on 17th August 1891 with “The Spectre Bridegroom” and “Queena”. It was used for Drama, Vaudeville and Movies over the years and artists who appeared on it’s stage include Al Jolson and Charlie Murray.

In 1975, the Manager of this theatre took me on a brief tour upstairs here, where he had discovered a room which had been walled off. (they must have been doing some renovation work.) Inside, covered in soot, were a few dozen rolled 40x60s all from the years 1942 and 1943. Littered on the floor, were lobby cards and stills. There was also an area above the ceiling of the auditorium where I saw old glass light covers. I grabbed a few choice items from the old “poster room” and lugged them out to my car. One of the posters was a Yankee Doodle Dandy which I sold to a fellow Manager at the GCC Hanover Mall, named Jim Mahoney. I understand Jim had this poster displayed on the wall of his office there for a few years. I wish I had appreciated this stuff back then.